Genesis 50:3

Jacob and Joseph were both embalmed in Egypt, but we never read that it was practised by the children of Israel. Gen. 50:2-3, 26. The historians Herodotus and Diodorus describe the process of embalming in Egypt. There were several methods. The choice depended on the rank of the dead person, or on what the relatives could afford to pay. In short, the body lay in nitre for thirty days. This dried up all its excess and harmful moisture, and the brain and bowels were sometimes removed. Then for forty days more they anointed it with gums and spices to preserve it. When this was complete, they wrapped it round with many bandages. Last of all, they put it in a case shaped roughly like the person.

Other countries simply buried their dead. Joseph instead gives orders to the physicians to embalm his father. This took forty days, and the mourning lasted 70 days (v. 3). Much later than this, Egyptian history records 30 days for embalming and 72 days of mourning for a king. Those are not significant changes. But the implication is clear: no one invented this story later in history, for he would have given the figures he knew.

They bury Jacob with great lamentation, and the Egyptians — all the world — lament. We read of nothing like this in the case of Abraham or Isaac, or even of Joseph afterward. Why does the Spirit of God dwell on this mourning for Jacob?

Being in Egypt, the burial customs of that land were observed up to a certain point, but Jacob's body was not to lie embalmed in an Egyptian tomb. By Jacob's desire, as well as Joseph's, it was to lie in the land of promise. The promise of God was a reality to their faith, since "faith is the assurance of things hoped for" (Heb. 11:1). The things hoped for are real, and faith gives them substance — it makes them real to us.

The patriarchs of the Jewish family all put special value on their dead bodies. They were laid with religious care in the tomb at Machpelah. This care and zeal of theirs was the confession of their sure and certain hope of resurrection. But they connected resurrection with the land of Canaan. So Jacob and Joseph, who died in Egypt, arranged for their bones to be carried over and laid in Canaan. This tells us that their hope of resurrection was the same as their hope of one day possessing the promised land.

Joseph told the physicians to embalm the body. Embalming would keep the dead body for hundreds of years. In this matter the Egyptians were very clever. They did not know what we know of resurrection, and so they kept those bodies. We Christians know that God will raise the dead. "Who will transform our lowly body to be like His glorious body."

Let us go into the chamber of death. It will do you no harm. It was not for one day, but for "forty days." Every one of those ten men then said to himself: "It has come. The old man is gone. What will happen now?" Again conscience woke up. As they look at the body of their father, their conscience works. You face death for forty days, and I will tell you what you will do. You will say to yourself, I should like to be right with God; I should like to be right in view of death myself.